


Catch My Breath

by Remember When (scribblemyname)



Category: Hawkeye (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Brothers, Friends to Lovers, Incest, Mentions of Bloodplay, Mentions of Previous Domestic Abuse, Mentions of S/M, Multi, Mutual Pining, Polyamory, Scars, Threesome - F/M/M, Twosome to Threesome, UST, Voyeurism, Weaponplay, mentions of bondage, mentions of child abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-03-12 04:19:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3343439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblemyname/pseuds/Remember%20When
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She stared between Barney's closed-off expression and Clint's grin. "I'm trying to figure out how to hug two people at the same time," she complained.</p><p>Her first urge had been to hug Clint, her partner and the one who'd picked her up after every mission for so long now, she felt wrong until she knew they were both alive and together, but she also knew how she'd left and she didn't want Barney to think she'd chosen Clint and rejected him. She hadn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Catch My Breath

**Author's Note:**

  * For [geckoholic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/geckoholic/gifts).



> Many thanks to geckoholic who not only prompted this when I said I needed to write a threesome for the microbang and couldn't pick, but who also offered to beta and sounding board and who ended up providing a needed outlet when I freaked out while writing it.
> 
> Also, thanks to Kelly Clarkson's "Catch My Breath" which gave me the inspiration every time I stalled out.
> 
>  
> 
> Sorry, geckoholic, I didn't get all the kinky stuff really on-screen like I wanted. I kinda ran out of time.

When Kate Bishop came in the door at Hawkeye and Hawkeye: Heroes for Hire, the first things that caught her attention were the bulky black quiver sitting on the reception desk and the smell of over-roasted coffee that probably indicated the other Hawkeye, Clint Barton, was awake.

“Clint!” she demanded loudly as she dumped her own quiver beside the foreign object. “What’s this on my desk?”

Luckily, he hadn’t just made coffee; he’d apparently drunk enough to be coherent and put his hearing aids in and hear her hollering from downstairs. Or at least, that was the obvious deduction to make from his holler back of, “It’s a quiver.”

Kate ground her jaw, once, then called out, “I _know_ it’s a quiver. Why isn’t it yours?”

A pause. A _long_ pause. The sound of Lucky, ostensibly Clint’s dog but really theirs, whining in the interlude.

“Isn’t it yours?” Clint’s voice sounded worried, like he had never even questioned that an unfamiliar scruffy-looking quiver must needs belong to his partner in heroism, the only other archer _she_ knew of being in his life.

She pressed her lips together firmly and looked around for further signs of invasion. There were muddy bootprints on the floor. She picked up her bow and followed them.

Kate came around the corner and regarded solemnly the interloper in _their_ kitchen. The building may have had Clint's name on it, but the business was half hers, so the kitchen was theirs despite Clint's frequent grumbling protests to the contrary.

Their visitor was darker than Clint, leaner, but with the unmistakable stamp of 'family' on his features. He had the corded musculature of an archer, the same confident manner of using his hands, and apparently, the same disgusting habit of drinking straight from the milk carton.

Kate cleared her throat and raised her eyebrow at him when he whirled on her, startled. She lowered her bow.

"Use a glass," she ordered curtly and fetched him one down from the cupboard. "You would think being male had granted you special immunity from germs."

The man laughed low in his throat. "It's just my brother's," he said with a smirk.

She pointedly held out the glass. "I'm Hawkeye. Use a glass."

He took it, chagrined and puzzled expressions warring on his face, but poured the milk in. "Hawkeye, huh?"

Kate stalked out of the kitchen without answering.

* * *

Clint was not so lucky. She threw open his bedroom door and barged in without waiting for a reaction. She’d clearly caught him fairly fresh out of bed, his blonde hair sticking up every which way and purple aids conspicuous in his ears. He was wearing nothing more than three bandaids and a pair of boxers. On seeing her, he dove for his pants while cursing profusely.

Kate didn’t wait for him to get decent. "Why is your _brother_ in our kitchen drinking our milk without so much as a, 'Hi, Kate, my brother I've never even told you I have is coming over for a visit'?" She planted both hands on her hips and glared at him.

"Knock, wouldya!" He seemed to be struggling with getting the drawstring on the sweats to actually tie, and Lucky yipping excitedly at the commotion certainly wasn’t helping.

Kate rolled her eyes to the high heavens and went over to tie it for him.

Clint stilled, staring at her from only a few inches away. It only took a gentle shoo to a reproachful Lucky, the spoiled mutt, and the work of a moment.

She looked up and raised both eyebrows in a ‘Really, Clint?’

No one should need to be rescued from their own dog.

Suddenly Clint's eyes went wide. "Who did you say is out there?"

Kate eyed him sharply. "Your brother. He drinks from the milk carton too. Tell him not to do that."

Clint huffed. "You can fight your own battles." He slipped past her and out the bedroom door. "Barney?"

Kate followed cautiously and at a distance. She watched as Barney grinned and grabbed Clint up in what probably used to be a bear hug, judging from the way their body language seemed to expect Clint to be smaller until he wasn't and they were hugging at the same level. They backed up a step. She could see the faint hunched line to Clint's shoulders that meant he'd been taken aback and the way he rubbed his neck when he wasn't sure what to say or do next.

Brothers.

Kate refrained from rolling her eyes at both of them and their awkward mannerisms and walked over with enough obvious impatience to get on both their radars before she ended up on the receiving end of mercenary instincts. She'd done that—once. Clint had looked horrified and she'd been too busy picking herself up off the floor to reassure him she was fine, despite the 'fine' collection of bruises he might have given her. So yeah. She approached obviously before latching onto both of their elbows and dragging them into the kitchen to sit them down with coffee—a mug for Barney, a mug for herself, and the pot with whatever was left for Clint. Then she plunked herself on the chair between them and started talking.

"So..." Kate drew out the word until Barney's head came up, then grinned at him. "You shoot?"

She nodded her head in the direction of his bow. His gaze followed obligingly.

He gave a rather Bartonesque shrug, that little sideways, half uncaring, half caring too much gesture she'd always associated with Clint only. It was almost a little disconcerting to see it there on someone else.

She covered it with another question. “Are you a Hawkeye too?”

“Nah." Barney's grin flashed back out again, dimpling his cheeks. "I might’ve impersonated him once.”

“The difference is,” Clint fired back, “ _you_ missed.”

“We can’t all of us be superhuman.”

Clint swallowed that down and set the coffeepot back on the table. Kate found herself staring at his hearing aids despite herself. He was speaking. She looked at his eyes.

“We’re none of _us_ superhuman,” Clint answered pointedly.

Barney conceded that without words.

As much as they liked to pretend otherwise, that was half the reason Kate had never wanted to move past the friends stage with Clint, however intimately their lives continued to entwine. He was a pure genius for getting himself into life-threatening danger—and sometimes joked that's why he got into the hero business, because how else was he supposed to put that to good use. She really didn't need to fall head over heels and lose him.

"So how well do you shoot anyway?" she demanded of Barney. She sipped her coffee and smiled at his look. "We have a range on the roof."

Clint groaned but they ended up there anyway.

"You still got it?" Barney asked Clint. "How about you go first?"

Clint rolled his eyes and fired five perfect shots into the five targets on the other side of the roof. "Next." He handed Barney his bow.

Barney declined, holding up his own. "Might as well stick to the familiar."

Clint snorted, and Kate wondered if there was a story there. She didn't ask though, just watched as Barney flexed his arms and shot behind his back, off of the brick, a sinker, an arrow corrected by another arrow and...

"D—. I must hie me to a circus."

Barney grinned at her, a fierce and feral thing. "They called me Trickshot."

"And anyone can see why." She hummed thoughtfully, then shook her head. No way she could best Clint at what he did, even if she was good and knew it.

She lifted her bow, nocked an arrow, and took aim.

There were two things really that Clint had taught her. The basics, she had learned long before she ever met him. He'd taught her to take the shot, no matter what. He'd taught her not to miss. So she didn't.

* * *

Clint watched them dancing around each other the first few days and wondered if they even realized how obvious they were being. Barney saw all the points to admire in Kate that Clint did. No surprise there. He wasn't threatened by them. Surprise.

Barney and Clint never had gotten along since Clint got old enough for it to become obvious he was the better marksman, but a girl? A girl didn't count and Kate was all girl and apparently all interested.

At least, that's how it appeared to Clint until she cornered him in the back when he was trying to do laundry. Living behind a business didn't make it easy to keep a washing machine the builder never planned for. Kate, as usual, showed little patience for his domestic difficulties when she came in, Lucky on her heels, and sat up on the washer he was trying to coax into functionality.

"A little busy here, Katie-Kate."

"I can see that," she said with a little grin and absently smoothed out his hair from where he'd been running his hands through it.

He really wished she'd stop doing little things like that. They sent a jolt through his system he wasn't prepared to deal with.

"So why is your brother here anyway if you didn't invite him? And why don't you ever talk about him?"

Clint took a deep breath. She always went straight for the jugular, but then that's what he loved about her. The first time they'd met, she was telling him off for his precise failings, even if she shouldn't have had a clue what they were.

He shrugged with one shoulder. "Doesn't matter. He's here."

She rolled her eyes. "You Bartons are all alike." She hopped off the washer, not realizing she'd just about knocked the wind out of him.

Were they all alike? Were they really?

Lucky whined and tucked his wet nose under Clint's arm. Clint automatically started petting him, and it actually made him feel a little better.

"Clint?"

No one ever said Kate wasn't observant.

"We're not good for each other," Clint finally said, "but he's my brother."

She stared at him for a long moment, mouth pressed together in a firm line. Finally, she nodded and disappeared.

Lucky stayed with Clint for once. He was inordinately glad.

* * *

Barney kept the same hours Clint did when there wasn't any work on the horizon: when he woke, he was awake. It was unpredictable at best, but if Kate and Clint were up and about for too long, he woke up just because of 'all the moving around.'

Kate kind of liked when he wandered out into the kitchen sometime in the morning. He made excellent coffee.

"Self-preservation," Barney said dryly. "The rookies at the FBI can't make coffee to save their life. They're used to buying at Starbucks."

Kate accepted a mugful. "And the old-timers?"

"They made sludge." Barney grinned sharply, then shook his head. "You don't like Clint's coffee?"

She shrugged. "It's good the first morning he makes it. Or, you know, before he drinks straight out of the pot."

"You're good for him," Barney commented.

And that came out of the blue. Kate frowned. Barney hadn't actually been around long enough to see her prodding Clint toward cleaning or self-preservation or not being depressed when the urge hit.

"Thanks?" She glanced around for somewhere to settle in.

Barney hesitated. "You two are together, right?"

Kate nearly spewed her coffee. She could probably write a book on the topic. Clint was... Clint. They were both Hawkeye and they trusted each other implicitly, but...

“He said he didn’t want to sleep with me,” she informed him as she perched up on the kitchen counter.

Barney huffed a raspy laugh at her and shook his head over his mug. “That may be what he said, but it’s probably not what he meant.”

Kate shrugged and scooted a little closer.

Barney looked at her very seriously. "He's probably head over heels in love with you, if I know the look, and I do. I'm not going to mess with that."

"He's my partner," she stated bluntly.

Barney just looked at her.

Kate huffed. “Fine then. Be that way.” She ran one finger over his shoulder before pushing off him to flip her legs over the other side of the counter and leap down _somewhat_ gracefully if she did say so herself.

Barney wasn’t so unlike his brother. His eyes and lopsided smile told her she’d managed more than somewhat.

* * *

The flirting didn't really stop and Clint watched quietly from his side seat to the whole thing as Kate pushed, Barney reacted, and then he stopped reacting, which made Kate huff and do something more productive with her time, like compile a lengthy report with footnotes on a crime spree in a residential area on the other side of town.

"Mafia," she fingerspelled, then switched to sign with, "I'm sure of it. The police aren't doing much, and I have three requests for us to check it out."

So they did, even if they didn't immediately find that much. Kate could snoop if it made her feel better about Barney taking a deep breath and stepping back whenever he seemed to enjoy her attention too much.

Then Clint realized Barney wasn't really looking at Kate when he stepped back. He was looking at Clint.

* * *

"Got something you want to ask me?"

Barney had finished repairing half of Kate's broken arrowheads, and it wasn't like she wouldn't notice.

He set down the one he'd just finished and looked Clint head on like he should have more than a week ago. "She wants..." He trailed off, shook his head. "Are you two on the same page?"

Clint shrugged, as if it didn’t matter, as if it didn’t make something twist in his gut. He’d never thought of Kate like that. He didn’t want her, didn’t want to ruin the good thing they had because he had an excellent track record of doing just that with every other woman in his personal life the instant they introduced sex and romance. Cue his remarkable ability to screw up everything because he was too afraid they were going to abandon him and he never did deserve them in the first place.

“Me and Kate aren’t like that,” he said, and that didn’t make his stomach twist. It wasn’t even a lie. He didn’t want sex with her because, reasons. Good reasons. Reasons that would make his ex-wife, Bobbi, or his best friend, Natasha, agree.

When you loved someone, you didn’t throw them in the line of fire. It was as simple as that.

Barney stared at Clint for a long, long time before answering slowly, as if he couldn’t quite believe what Clint was saying (and who could blame him?). “Okay.”

Okay. And just like that, Clint’s life went from comfortable, with that slight edge of tension having both Bartons under one roof always brought, to hell on earth.

* * *

Kate dragged Barney out to a concert, music they agreed on when Clint and Kate couldn't share a radio station without starting a war. Clint repaired the rest of her broken arrowheads. He dragged them into his room and pretended he wasn't actually affected by any of this because he wasn't.

He didn't _have_ to turn around and head the other direction whenever he caught them in the hall, heads bent together too close. He just wanted to give them their privacy. He didn't have to interpret Kate and his way of talking to each other because of a relationship. He explained because having an extra bow on their jobs made the work easier. He used to work with Barney. This was normal and not because of the two of them were moving past flirting to something more solid.

That's what he told himself anyway.

* * *

They got in late, very late. Clint heard soft giggling, Kate's, over Barney's raspy chuckle. One or both stumbled over Lucky in the hall.

"We have an audience."

"F—. Room."

The 'room' was right next to Clint's, and his hand tightened around the broken arrow shaft as he listened to the hard breathing and rustling of cloth turn to low moans and then bodies hitting the wall on the other side of him. They were right against his wall, and he felt his eyes widen as he leaned one hand on it.

"Barney," she moaned breathily.

Clint swallowed a groan with his brother. He was hard at the sounds they were making, the rhythm of their mingled broken breaths and their rocking against his wall. He had to stay quiet, couldn't let them know he was listening, but he couldn't not want.

He pressed slowly into the drywall, one hand on himself.

Barney groaned rough and low, and it shot something hot and fierce through Clint. It was wrong, this was more than wrong, but he couldn't stop and there was Kate's sharp cry of orgasm, then he was coming hot and silent.

His hand stilled as he caught his breath.

Kate and his brother were murmuring softly together, laughing beneath their breaths. It had been a long time since Clint had laughed with anyone during sex.

He felt dirty. This was his _brother_ —and _Kate_. Clint shook his head, disgusted with himself, and went to go clean up.

* * *

"Fury wants to hire us. For free." Kate was leaning over his desk with one hand on her hip, black hair in an uncomplicated updo, and a disapproving expression on her face. "I told him we don't do pro bono for the government."

Not that Hawkeye and Hawkeye didn't do pro bono. Clint could be a bleeding heart according to Kate.

"Sounds fair," Clint said dryly.

He marked off one more form as done. Kate was always on him about doing the paperwork. If they were going to keep playing private detective and vigilante, they had to make nice with the local government.

But she wasn't looking at the growing stack of completed forms. She was staring at him with that no-nonsense, see-right-through-you look that seemed to go with being a Hawkeye.

"Clint?"

"I'm fine," he said automatically, then had to suppress a wince at the look on her face.

There was no awkwardness between them, never had been, and his ex-wife liked to joke they were practically one person, so this? This urge to deflect and hide from Kate was new and unwelcome, stuttering between them.

Kate drew back stiffly. "Fine."

Then she was gone around the corner to her own desk.

Lucky looked back and forth between them, then followed Kate, thumping his tail.

"Abandoned by my own dog,' Clint muttered. He shoved the unfinished stack back a few inches on the desk and leaned his arms heavily on the space that made.

"I think the dog's both of yours," Barney's voice commented far too close for comfort.

Clint nearly jumped out of his seat and cursed expressively. "Don't sneak up on me."

Barney shrugged and sat on Clint's desk. He handed Clint a white mug with a purple H on it, a gift from Kate once, and the smell was the good smell of hot coffee. Barney sipped from his own mug, black with a purple bullseye.

"That's Kate's," Clint said before he thought about it.

Barney hesitated, expression frozen between guilt and knowledge.

Yeah. That's right. Barney had that right now, to use Kate's things.

Clint downed his coffee. "I'm taking Lucky for a walk. He hasn't gotten out today." He dropped the mug on the desk and snagged Lucky's leash out of the drawer.

Kate smiled when he collected the dog, but he didn't say anything before shoving his hands in his pockets and heading out down the street.

* * *

"I think he's mad at me." Kate frowned as she shot another arrow into the bullseye out on the roof. It was late, but target practice always helped clear her head.

Barney sighed behind her and slipped his quiver on over his back. "I don't think he's mad."

She hummed disagreement and kept shooting, losing herself in the sensation and the slow ache settling into her muscles. Barney shot beside her, releasing as she was nocking, nocking as she was releasing. It was more pleasant than trying to figure out where she stood with Clint.

"Hey, you ever do any trick shots?"

She nocked three arrows at once and let them fly.

"Nice," he said approvingly. "How about a bounce-off?"

"Nope."

"Split an arrow?"

She scowled. Oh, there was history there and a very nice bow she'd lost to Clint over that one. "No."

Barney chuckled. "I can teach you."

She started to retort, then thought about it. Even Clint didn't excel at the tricks, just the aim, though that was remarkable. "Sure."

She watched and listened and tried her own fingers in the positions for several shots Barney knew how to make. She went for something beyond easy first and dared him to call her on it.

He didn't, just folded his hands over hers as he corrected the position slightly, then they retreated to her elbows. "Try that."

Kate wasn't sure what to make of it. His touch was warm and his presence close enough to smell him, feel him, be really aware of him. How many times had Clint taught her, but he was always distant, leaning against the protective edge of the roof, playing with an arrow, one or both arms crossed as he drolled out one snarky line after another. Somehow his presence filled the space between anyway.

But he never touched her. He never really touched her.

Bothered, Kate shot the arrow, watched it wobble the way Barney's had, then bury its head right where she'd wanted it. The drunken arrow trick. "You know that's not half as sexy as guys think it is," she pointed out.

"What isn't?" His tone was half amused, half genuine question.

She turned into him, only way to call it when she was standing so incredibly close, and suddenly she didn't care if it was sexy or if Clint didn't touch her but filled the space anyway because Barney was here with her and he _wanted_ to have sex with her.

She kissed him. His mouth closed over hers and his hands pulled her closer by her hips. It was hot and he tasted like Chinese takeout and heat and coffee, and it prompted a little needy sound in the back of her throat because he tasted just like she'd always wondered if Clint tasted but better than she'd imagined it.

She shoved him in the general direction of the door and so what if they hit a few walls on the way there.

He was rough with her, shoving her against the wall in her room as hard as she'd shoved him on the roof. His mouth was on hers, teeth and tongue and not gentle at all; his hand was working through her hair, pulling against her scalp as he sent pins tumbling and tossed aside the stragglers he had to find himself to get rid of.

Somehow, at some point, they ended up on the bed.

"What's with all the purple?" he asked, laughing breathlessly, as he tugged down her _purple_ panties.

"Hey!" Kate grinned and slapped his shoulders for that. " _Clint_ likes purple."

"Clint."

There was something in the way Barney said the word, something in the rough sound of it, that would have given her pause, but then Barney's hands were on her and they were as clever as any stereotype about archers could possibly claim.

"Barney," she breathed, then moaned as she arched into his touch.

He pressed harder, slipped inside her, and she gasped. She reached up for the headboard rail for something to hold onto and dug in when he curled his finger just so. He hit something inside her that made her gasp again and angle her hips closer. He kept doing it, slid another finger in, ran his thumb around her clit, and she let the feeling rush through her, didn't fight the relentless push toward climax.

"More." She ground down harder.

He gave her more, harder, rougher, deeper, and then she was coming in a blinding rush and taking deep, ragged breaths after.

He leaned down and kissed her. She kissed him back, hands sliding off the rail so she could wrap her arms around his shoulders and pull him close.

"Hang on," she ordered. She let go long enough to dig around in the drawer for a condom. Kate may not have had much of a sex life, but she'd figured out early on to at least be prepared for one. "Here."

It was good, better than good, and better than she'd had before. Afterward, she propped herself up on her side as he threw away the condom. He had good aim too.

"What I can't figure out is why I never met you before." It wasn't the first time Kate had brought it up and it wasn't the first time he shot her back a rueful look. It was the first time she mentioned, "I thought I knew everyone important to him."

"Katie-Kate," he admonished.

That did something funny in her gut and made her want to squirm. Only Clint called her that.

"He's my brother."

She sighed and flopped back. "That's what he said."

The silence stretched for several long moments while Barney studied her, expressionless. Finally he said, quietly, "I've spent most of my life being the villain in his."

The words fell between them, hard and ungiving.

She reached up to trace over the grim lines in his face. Both Bartons had reasons to dislike themselves, but Kate knew Clint and she knew that whatever was between them consisted of more than just the bad. "He loves you, you know."

Barney took her hand and kissed it, then let it go.

She brushed it over an odd jagged cluster of scars over his right shoulder and looked at him questioningly.

He shrugged. "Beer bottle."

Clint had scars like that. She had shied away before from putting those pieces together, but there was no mistaking it now. She leaned up and kissed him there.

When she drew back, she almost didn't recognize the look in his eyes, but then she did and she smiled. "I've never had an archer look at me like I'm as precious as his bow."

And then again, she wasn't the only one who could draw conclusions. "So Clint..."

"I don't really want to talk about Clint while you're in my bed." She made a face. "We're not like that." And they weren't. They were partners. Clint was... Clint.

Barney laughed and stretched out beside her, affording a really delicious view of abs and chest. "You brought up the subject."

She had too. Huh. "Well, now, I'm changing it." She rolled over and snuggled her head on his chest. "How long are sticking around?"

"For a very long time."

The sound of his voice rumbled through her under her head. She hummed contentment and let herself drift off to sleep.

* * *

She tied him down the next time while Barney tested the bonds in amusment.

"You a sadist?"

"Maybe I just want you at my mercy?" Kate answered, smirking.

"You don't have any."

She ran one finger down his arm and watched his eyes darken.

"Not that I'm asking for any."

* * *

She wasn't a sadist. Quite the opposite really.

* * *

Seven perfect lines of reddened, irritated skin. Shaft marks, Clint's mind supplied and stuttered.

Kate caught him staring and her cheeks flushed faintly. It sent something else hot and fluttering through him. He had to shut down that line of thinking, quickly, before it ruined everything.

She tugged down on her sleeve, but it didn’t quite hide the marks he was staring at.

He was staring. Clint dragged his gaze away and met his brother’s knowing, questioning look. This time, Clint flushed. He made himself focus on the eggs in the skillet. He stared at the eggs, smelled the eggs, and poked at them with his spatula so he could ignore his brother and Kate and the perfect marks on her perfect skin from the shafts of seven arrows.

* * *

Kate wasn't expecting her morning to start with Steve 'I-like-mornings' Rogers standing on Hawkeye and Hawkeye's doorstep asking after Clint.

"We need a sniper," he said, as if this were any ordinary sort of request.

"Come on in." She shoved the door open wider. "I'll see if he's up."

Clint was not up. He was sprawled facedown on the bed, bare back covered in scrapes he couldn't bandage himself and she hadn't noticed to do for him.

It made her wince when she realized he'd come back in after helping the police last week and she'd never even checked to see if he'd actually taken care of himself, just let it go at "Fine," as if Clint ever wasn't lying when he said that.

She leaned over the bed about to wake him when her hand paused on the way down. Three small scars near his heart. They could have been bullet wounds but they weren't.

_"I've spent most of my life being the villain in his."_

This wasn't the first time she'd seen him with his shirt off, wasn't the first time she'd seen those scars, but this was the first time she recognized them for exactly what they were. Arrows.

Kate blanched.

"Hey, someone's waiting out here..." Barney's voice trailed off as he saw her and what she was looking at.

Kate had spent the last few years learning Barton gestures and she knew that slightly hunched in look to the shoulders, the way his head dropped slightly. They were both messed up, and she'd known that going in, but not like this.

"I'm going out with Steve," she blurted.

He looked at her for a long moment, then nodded.

Kate slipped past him and grabbed her go-bag Clint had always insisted she keep. "Clint's still out," she told Steve. "You got me."

He didn't argue, just nodded and led her to his car.

She didn't look back.

* * *

Clint didn't entirely know what to do with being left alone with Barney. He should have known. This used to be old hat, the correcting of centripetal force against everything in life that kept them flying away from each other along different paths.

Kate was what made it different. She had changed Barney and his current mood had everything to do with her.

"You fight?" Clint asked when he realized it.

He was standing behind the couch while Barney watched the news on mute with the closed caption on. Clearly, old habits hadn't entirely died out.

Barney leaned back to get Clint in his line of view. "You sure you're all right with us?" He signed as he spoke, a certain sign there was a lot going on behind the question.

It took Clint aback for a moment, but he looked at Barney and thought of all that he and Barney had gone through together, that at the end of it all, they never could or wanted to escape each other and the pull between them. He thought of Kate taking up his name and seeing all his faults and failings and hurts and simply accepting them as part of the package that made up someone she cared about, even looked up to. Barney never would have the part of her that made them Hawkeye and Hawkeye. He couldn't.

"Yeah," Clint answered finally. "I'm sure."

* * *

They found their center again after that, the rough way they fit together like two survivors stuck pulling each other out of all the trouble one or the other had always managed to find.

Barney was the only person Clint had ever allowed to defend him, not just have his back. Those old habits. They never really went away.

"I see you still always find trouble wherever it lives," Barney griped as he shot a few arrows over Clint's head into the thickest group of mafia thugs that hadn't found cover yet.

Clint lay sprawled behind their own cover, a deplorably inadequate spread of trash cans. He still had his hands on his own bow though, and he managed to fire off a few choice shots.

"And you still think it's my fault every time someone tries to kill me." He couldn't really help it that the words were a little bitter. Barney could and would hit him while he was down. It was his own misguided way of trying to make Clint stronger.

Barney just squinted at him before firing off another shot. It bounced off the brick walls and down behind a thug's cover. A pained cry. And that's why they called him Trickshot.

Clint saw an opening and took it, barely even looking.

"I'd be less likely to believe that," Barney finally condescended to answer, "if it ever quit happening."

Somehow, Clint didn't really have an answer for that one.

* * *

They made it back alive after sending a message back to the mafia that made it pretty clear how they felt about the continual invasions of that area of town. The residents would appreciate a little peace, thank you very much.

Barney didn't rib Clint for the bandaids he used on various scrapes and gashes and...

Okay, he did stop him from putting it on the bullet graze.

"You dropped on the head or something?" Barney demanded. He yanked Clint over to dump alcohol on the wound.

Clint bristled, more from the gesture than the words. Sometimes Barney was scarily like their father. "I don't know. You'd remember though." He said it easily, like he hadn't just fired off a shot with better aim than he did an arrow.

Barney growled and wrapped the graze in a proper bandage. He got up to put on coffee.

Clint just watched for a while. The tension eventually settled and it was all comfortably familiar. They didn't know how to be friends, but they were brothers and that had always been more than enough.

"Like old times, huh?" Clint asked.

Barney looked at him. His mouth came up in that lopsided, razor sharp grin of his. "Just like."

* * *

Kate was more than a little worse for wear when she returned. And she had thought about not returning, but the gnawing feeling in her stomach when she thought of both of them, either of them, without her there brought her shuffling back in through the front door and around the corner to the kitchen.

She dropped her duffel on the ground and took in Barney's boots up on the table and Clint frying something in kitchen, the sound of masculine laughter bouncing off the walls while Lucky leaped up from head in Barney's lap to howl that Kate had come back and nearly knock her over in his enthusiasm to say hi.

"Katie-Kate!" Clint sing-songed her welcome, and she _felt_ welcome. This was home and they were both okay and had some time ago learned to live with the fact that they'd once been on the wrong ends of each other's weaponry.

She stared between Barney's closed-off expression and Clint's grin. "I'm trying to figure out how to hug two people at the same time," she complained.

Her first urge had been to hug Clint, her partner and the one who'd picked her up after every mission for so long now, she felt wrong until she knew they were both alive and together, but she also knew how she'd left and she didn't want Barney to think she'd chosen Clint and rejected him. She hadn't.

And there they were, crowded into her space, and drawing her into their arms at once. She held on and soaked in the warmth.

When she finally pulled away, she felt better on so many levels, but, "I'm going to take a shower now. Neither of you are invited."

Barney just laughed, fingers sliding out of her hair as she went. Clint looked startled.

She didn't parse that, couldn't parse that, even if it made something curl up sickeningly in her gut as she went in her room and yanked off clothes to drop on Lucky. She left him tangled with her shirt and headed for the shower.

No one could love two people at once. That's now how these things worked. Kate turned the spray on hot and clambered in.

She heard Lucky bark victory at the shirt, then...

"No! Lucky!"

The dog splashed into the shower with her in a series of thumps and oofs and "You crazy mutt, you!"

She dragged him out, spluttering water and dog hair, opened the bedroom door and shoved the wet dog into Clint and Barney, who had apparently heard the commotion. She ignored her own blush at the situation and that she'd forgotten to wrap herself up in a towel before evicting him.

No one should need rescuing from her own dog.

She slammed the door shut behind her.

* * *

She hummed disapproval when she saw the new cuts on his back. "You couldn't ask Barney to help you reach your back? Or Natasha, for crying out loud. She would've helped."

"I'm fine," Clint replied automatically. He usually ran on automatic around her when she started fussing, but then she was there right up in his space as she applied antiseptic to all the tiny injuries that were now loudly protesting the attention.

"That stings," he complained.

Kate glared him into silence. When she was done, she lingered beside him a shade too long. He caught his breath as fingers brushed feather-soft over the angry red line still healing on his jaw. It'd be gone soon, another mark that failed to stick.

"Kate," he breathed. "Don't." It was a plea more than she knew, more than he wanted her to know. He couldn't not want.

She tucked her lower lip beneath her teeth, then shook her head and brushed lips even softer over the line before she pulled away. "I wouldn't tell me what to want."

He didn't think he caught his breath again before she was gone.

* * *

Clint really didn't have time to wait when he barged into Kate's room, completely forgetting that there was more than one reason they should have started knocking before doing that, and hadn't any of them ever heard of _locks_?

Kate sprang back, cursing, as she yanked Barney's shirt off the bed to cover her nakedness and put her mouth over the blood on her arm.

Barney was still holding an arrow in his skilled fingers. The cut was clean and bloody and Clint's mind had pretty much shorted out at the sight of the two of them. He stared at Barney's hand, not quite sure what it was he was feeling, but knowing it wasn't unpleasant.

Barney wasn't looking caught out. He was staring at Clint, taking in that Clint was still staring, and there was something hungry in his eyes.

Clint backed up a step, forced himself to think. "We have a situation. I need your help."

Thankfully, Kate had gotten decent enough to be the sensible one again. "Mafia, right?" She could always be counted on to say, 'I told you so.'

* * *

They were all a little messed up when they came in from putting the same mafia down for good. Clint was slipping on his own blood and his ears were ringing without his hearing aids in. He hoped it wasn't permanent. He seemed to hear okay when he jammed the aids back in. Barney looked about as punched up as he used to after a night of their father's hard drinking. Kate wiped a smear of dirt and blood off her cheek with the back of her hand, only for more red to well up.

"Gotta call the police about clean up, file a report," she muttered.

She was slurring. If he didn't know her so well, he'd guess she'd just said, "Geico police b' clean up, failed rapport."

Clint caught her hand and pulled her down beside him on the couch. Barney sank down on the other side with the first aid kit.

"How about clean up first?" Clint commented.

She made a small, huffing sound but subsided. Kate was good at that, disapproving but going on along with things anyway. She sat up, gestured at his shirt, that she wanted him to take it off.

Barney squinted at his latest collection of bruises and cuts. "Does he always look that bad?"

"He likes jumping off of things and through glass," Kate commented. She enunciated better this time.

Clint rolled his eyes between them. "Right here, guys."

Kate flipped open the first aid kit lid and fished out alcohol and a box of bandaids. He'd always let her clean him up when she got bossy, but it hadn't felt like this before. She leaned on him as she worked and she smelled like guns and blood and Kate, but she was warm and her hair tickled over his skin as she worked. She was Barney's and she was _Kate_ and he tried to ignore his body's reaction to being surrounded by people he cared about, tried to ignore her body heat and Barney's beside him.

He was trying, but it wasn't working. Finally, he had to say it. "Kate, I think you need to get off of me."

She was so close, almost in his lap, and he couldn't ignore it or what it was making him feel and want. Barney's arm was brushing his, and at the words, instead of pulling away, he pressed a little closer.

“Clint.” Kate gently put her hand on his chin and turned his head so he had to look at her. “We’re not too good for you.”

She pulled away and he couldn’t help it. He reached for her and wrapped his hand around her wrist. Wait.

She waited, hovering at the edge of his lap, then came back to him, sinking against him like this had always been meant to be.

It scared him. _This_ scared him, but that didn't stop him from wanting it, didn't stop him from kissing Kate like he wondered if he'd always wanted to, or from going hot all over at the feel of Barney's arm coming around his back. 

Kate pulled back, lips red, and read him for a moment. He felt her fingers curling into the hair at the nape of his neck, light scratches against his skin. Barney leaned his head against his, breath hot on Clint's shoulder. It made him tense up, surprised, but then Kate pressed herself into both of them and kissed Clint harder, longer, sucking all the air out of him but filling him up with something else instead, something he wanted very much.

His hands moved without his permission, sliding the zipper down on her jacket. She shoved it back onto the floor, baring silky smooth shoulders, soft breasts in a lacy purple bra. Barney had her shimmying out of her pants, and she was no longer almost in his lap but actually in it as she went to work getting Barney out of his pants and watching with obvious interest as Barney slid his own jacket and shirt off. Clint wrapped one hand around her back and flicked open the bra. It slid down her arm and he kissed the skin where the strap had been, letting his mouth move it down her body.

She caught her breath audibly. Barney kissed her neck, and she moaned. Clint pulled her closer, and they were all so close, it was hard to keep track of whose hand was whose, whose mouth was on whose skin.

He was painfully hard when Kate breathed out, "Barney. Condom," and Clint cursed softly because this was real, this was getting real when she was sliding over him and Barney's hand was on her clit, the other on Clint's balls, and Kate was breathing raggedly into his neck, her own hand on Barney, getting him off against Clint's leg.

He was going to come, and it felt perfect and wrong all at once.

“Clint,” she whispered, hot breath on his ear.

She was so perfect, so tight, then Barney did something with his hand and she gasped out, "Barney," and came, wet heat clenching around him and sending Clint over the edge. Her hand worked for a moment longer, and Barney groaned against them both.

Barney pulled Clint close, so his head rested on his shoulder like when they were still young, still kids. It had been a comfort once upon a time, their physical proximity. Kate squirmed between them to lay her head on Barney’s chest and tuck herself against Clint’s arm, still breathing hard in the aftermath.

Her hands came up to sign. "If you run away after this, I'll track you down and kill you myself."

Clint couldn't help it. He laughed. He hadn't laughed during sex in so long and it felt good, really good. He nuzzled her neck and tightened his hold on his brother.

"Not going anywhere, Hawkeye."


End file.
